I came across an great image courtesy of Niel Harper’s Linkedin profile comparing how blockchain platforms relate with day to day applications. This is a great visual by Matteo Gianpietro Zago of The Internet of Blockchain Foundation.

Image by Matteo Gianpietro Zago of The Internet of Blockchain Foundation

A blockchain is a continuously growing list of records called blocks, which continues to grow as new records are added on top of each other. The blocks are linked and secured using cryptography (NARAYANAN, Arvind et al., 2016). Blockchain enables storage, validation, authorisation, and moving digital transactions across the Internet. The blockchain has its origin with the Bitcoin, which is a cryptocurrency, a form of virtual money and was the first blockchain implementation, conceptualised by a paper released in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto (NAKAMOTO, Satoshi, 2008).

Considering that coinmarketcap.com is now monitoring over 10,000 markets, this graphic above may not even have scratched the surface. It may not have captured the obscure blockchain technologies that will disrupt the market. But it is a great start nevertheless.

According to Matteo Gianpietro Zago, the technologies on the right of the image above represents web3.0, while those on the left represent web2.0. e makes good points on interoperability, uninterrupted services, and permissionless blockchain. In Web2.0, data has coalesced in a few individuals, the Google and Facebook of this world. He sees Web3.0 bringing decentralised platforms where information is not under the control of a few. I see this not materialising. To me, data is like wealth … it is really wealth. Wealth has a way of accumulating with the few, the majority being the cogs that drive the wealth to the few. In web3.0, or in a decentraised internet, it will not be any different. The schemers will still find a way of accumulating data, and influence, and control into the hands of a few. A good example has been the Bitcoin core scaling debates. Control of Bitcoin core has still remained in the hands of a few. These are entities who have already booked a seat at the table, running mining servers, learning the tech, contributing to the core tech, innovating and re-inventing. They already have a headstart. And the big multinationals have not been left behind. IBM, Google, Oracle, and Microsoft have already plunged into experimenting with blockchains.

Anyway, the purpose of this writeup is to appreciate how easy it is now to compare distributed decentralized applications to their non distributed counterparts as shown below. It makes it easier for beginners in the blockchain and crptocurrency tech to understand what the new tech is doing, and the problem it is trying to solve.

I pursuit of CC & CL in the TM series. CC3: How to own a house in Nairobi

Specific purpose: after the speech, you will be able to compare ways to own a house in Nairobi.
Test Audience: to see if the purpose of has been achieved. Using this steps, is owning a house in Nairobi
within your reach?

I came to Nairobi in January 2006, approximately 11 years ago, armed with a small shoulder bag with 2 shirts, 2 trousers, a diploma, and nowhere to sleep. I had 5000 shillings pocket money. From my research through daily nation classifieds, there were some hostels in Ngara where you could be accommodated at 3000 shillings per month. I called my friend Njoroge to take me to Ngara and help me identify the hostels. Njoroge, being a FRIEND could not allow me live in a hostel, and he hosted me in their home until I was able to settle. The Njoroge’s were lucky because they lived in their house bought many decades ago by their father. This got me thinking on also owning my own house.

Owning your own house is one of the most fulfilling things in life. It gives one the peace of mind.
In George Clason’s The Richest Man in Babylon, The fifth cure for a lean purse states :

Thus come many blessings to the man who owns a house. And greatly will it reduce his cost of living, making available more of his earnings for pleasures and the gratification of his desires. This, then, is the fifth cure for a lean purse: own your own home.

I will therefore try to demonstrate three ways to own a house in Nairobi, which are
1. Buy a ready-made house.
2. Buy an off plan house through a cooperative.
3. Buy a plot and build your ideal house.

1. Buy a ready-made house
This may be the easiest route to home ownership if you have deep pockets, or you have access to a mortgage plan. A two bedroom ready-made house within Nairobi would range from 6m to 30m depending on the location; while a 3 bedroom would range from 8m to 50m. The price alone would make this option
prohibitive to most Nairobi residents. Depending on the type of house, a bungalow or mansion with its own compound would be most expensive compared to a housing unit in an apartment flat. The advantage of buying a readymade house is you will not go through the hustles of constructing a house. The disadvantage is the cost may be prohibitive to many. If you us a mortgage, the price of any unit you chose would double over the payment period.

2. Buy an off plan house through a cooperative.
In this model, you pool resources together, through a form of cooperative. An off-plan house is which you purchase while it is still on paper. You may only know the location where the house would be build. Your contribution will form the initial capital that will go into building the house. One should be careful to ensure they chose a reputable and honest off-plan providers least the provider escapes with all your funds. THE FOURTH CURE for a lean purse according to the richest man in Babylon is:

“Guard thy treasures from loss”.

The advantage of pooled resources enable you to own a house in a good location. Buying your own land in say Runda or Kilimani may be out of reach, but if you pull resources together, you will be able to afford. The advantage of an off-plan arrangement is it is cheaper than buying an already made house. This is especially so if you are buying a housing unit in an apartment. Another advantage is you do not have to deal with the hustles of following up with masons and handy men. The cost of an off plan unit would range from 4m to 10m for a 2 bedroom house and 6m to 15 for a 3 bedroom house depending on the location. The disadvantage of this is you may get crooks who run away with you home savings.

3. Buy a plot and build your own house
finally, you may opt to buy land and build your ideal house. With this option, you have full flexibility, and you are the master of your own fate. You can buy a plot and pay for it within a certain period. Then you can start building the house immediately you have gathered enough resources. The advantage is after you have built the initial structure, the four walls and a roof, you can move in and continue with the finishing while inside. Another advantage is you move at your own pace, and there is no pressure from financiers unlike taking a mortgage. The disadvantage of this is the cost of a plot within Nairobi would be prohibitive since you are not getting economies of scale provided by the cooperative model.

In conclusion, the option you choose to own a house will depend on your own circumstances. You can choose to buy a ready-made house, purchase an off-plan through a cooperative, or buy land and build.
I chose the second option some three years ago, purchased an offplan house, and now I live in my own
house.

With these three methods of owning a house within Nairobi, is owning a house within your reach?
Great, then start today in your journey into home ownership.

Show all of the processes on the system along with their PIDs. However, it differs in that it presents output in a tree structure that shows how processes are related to each other and in that it provides less detailed information about each process than does ps.pstree

Lost processes with their pidps -A | lessps -a | less

Kill a process with pid 8280kill -SIGTERM 8280
orkill -9 8280

The a option tells ps to list the processes of all users on the system rather than just those of the current user, The u option tells ps to provide detailed information about each process. The x option adds to the list processes that have no controlling terminal.ps aux | less

The top chunk of information give system statistics, such as system load and the total number of tasks. You can easily see that there is 1 running process, and 55 processes are sleeping (aka idle/not using CPU resources). The bottom portion has the running processes and their usage statistics.top

To see a tree view, where hierarchal relationships are illustrated, we can run the command with these options:ps axjf

KENIC announced the launch of .ke second level domain in October 2017. It went through all the process of Grandfathering phase, trademark protection, and landrush auction of premium names. The second level enables you to register a domain like li.ke, ca.ke, ma.ke company.ke. bank.ke, or schools.ke.

Register .ke domains with transworldafrica.co.ke

The KENIC second level .ke domain auction has been ongoing for the better part of December 2017 and will end on 31st December 2017.

The auction that has been on auction.kenic.or.ke saw the domain ni.ke having a bid of about one billion Kenya shilling (Kes 1B), which is about ten million dollars ($10m). It is likely that the Sports apparel giant company Nike is interested with the domain, and there are other domainers who had been looking at owning the domain. It will be interesting to see who will be the final winner of www.ni.ke.

If you still need to snap a second level .ke domain before the auction ends, login to auction.kenic.or.ke. The minimum auction bid is Kes9,000 ($90).

If you already own a domain like company.co.ke and you need to get the equivalent company.ke, you can do so through the grandfathering phase which will end on 21st December 2017. Send us the request through email on domains[at]transworldafrica.com. The cost is Kes10,000 ($100)

Otherwise we look forward to you registerng your favourite .ke domain with transworldafrica.co.ke, which is your reliable domain and web hosting partner in Kenya. The cost of a second level .ke domain through transworldafrica.co.ke will be Kes6,000 ($60).

The general availability of .ke domain, where anybody can register a .ke domain will be 16th January 2018.

We would like to bring to your attention the introduction of second level domain registration in Kenya by the Kenya Network Information Center (KENIC). This means that you can register a domain like transworldafrica.ke instead of transworldafrica.co.ke.

Any existing third level domain owners can register similar names to their third level domains on the second level. This means that you have an opportunity to also register a new domain mycompany.ke to suppliment your existing mycompany.co.ke

Please note the following three faces for the .ke second level domain registration:

Sunrise Period.
This is the period when registered trademark owners can register their domains. If you have a trademark you want registered, contact us to register a .ke domain for you. example of a trademark is Google, so we can register for you google.ke if you are the trademark owner. Act now, and register your trademark on the .ke domain name space. The registration fee in this phase is Ksh10,000

Grandfathering phase
From now to 22nd December 2017.
This Phase will allow for existing third level domain owners to register similar names to their third level domains on the second level. Any existing third level domain owners can register similar names to their third level domains on the second level. This means that you have an opportunity to also register a new domain mycompany.ke to suppliment your existing mycompany.co.ke

The following are the conditions to register a domain in the second level from now through December 2017 (Gradfathering phase).
1. Provide a copy of Business name certificates to show proof of ownership.

Landrash phase
From December 2017.
This is general auction where all the cool names will be auctioned off. Example is ca.ke, ba.ke etc.
If you have names you want to bid, you can sent them to us via email, with the bid price, and we will bid them for you.

One wise person said, “The Man Who Does Not Read good books Has No Advantage Over the Man Who Cannot Read.” This applies to women as well by the way. Three years ago today, I decided I wanted to be a more prolific reader.

I identified the Kindle as the device that would enable me accomplish the goal. Instead of carrying a boxload of books, I would just pack then in one small portable device, and read a dozen books a month. After all, kindle versions are usually cheaper than paperback books.

So I sought to buy an e-reader, and the kindle paper white was the obvious leader. (show picture of kindle paperwhite) It is slim and very portable, can accommodate hundreds of books, and it does not develop dog ears.

So I went shopping on the Amazon website for that perfect paper white kindle. Amazon had like 10 versions of kindles. I was a bit confused. Why give a man a choice while you can have only one perfect product and save him the paradox of choice? They had the paperback version alright, but they came in different dimensions and capacity. 5″, 8″, 1GB, 2GB. And they had the Kindle HD that had Android operating system and could do a lot more. This also came in 8″ and 11″. Then they had the Kindle HDX ultimate, which came in 32 and 64, and 128GB, and 8″, and 11.5″. The HDX was dazzling, crystal clear images, great front and back camera, HD movie support, Internet browser, wifi, Bluetooth, and all bells and whistles that come with modern tablets. I fell in love. You see what Amazon did, they oversold a product to me.

This is a Kindle (show the big kindle). I know, It’s big, right? So I ended up buying the Kindle HDX, at a price I would not disclose to my mother, because that was the same cost of a 40*80 plot in our neighborhood. The plots where when you step out of the house, you are on the streets. Never mind.

Now I have this sparkling new Kindle HDX, that could do more than just read books. I could tweet great paragraphs, or Facebook them. Of course if I switched to Twitter, I had to check who had followed or un-followed me, scroll through the timeline, and lazy around retweeting and replying to fans, before switching to Facebook where I would spend another hour in vanity. Then to compensate for the lost time, I would open Temple Run the game and run, and run through the jungle, and slide through cool looking streams collecting golden coins and treasure. By the time I realise what I’m doing, 3 hours have gone by, and my reading time is over.

This pattern went on for a while, until I vowed to arrest it. I bought some physical paperback books which I can read with minimum interruption, with the phones and tablets stored far away. (show the books).

The paradox is, the paper white Kindle could solve all that. Friends, don’t fall for the paradox of choice. When you have rationally made a decision to pursue a path, let distractions not derail you. Pursue it with singular vision, and that way, you shall achieve your goals.

You see now, I still need to buy a Kindle, the paperwhite.

Speech delivered at Sema Toastmasters on 22nd November 2017, in the Humorous speech contest, meeting 215 at United Kenya Club, Nairobi, Kenya

“Clever and civilized men will not stay home
Leave your homeland and explore foreign fields
Go out! You shall find replacement for those you have left
Give your all, the sweetness of life will be tasted after the struggle
I have seen that standing water stagnates
If it flows, it is pure, if it does not, it will become murky
If the lion doesn’t leave his den, he will not eat
If the arrow does not leave the bow, it will not strike
If the sun stands still in its orbit
Man will tire of it
Gold dust merely soil before excavated
Aloewood is just ordinary wood if in the forest